Decisive Victory
In light of the recent debates about the “War on Women” in the US, I’ve started thinking that perhaps countries like Canada and the United States are just too big. Geographically, they’re huge areas. It seems unlikely that you’d be able to unite an entire country, which makes one wonder why anyone would ever want to be a president or a prime minister– it just seems like such a headache.
The individual states just have such self-interested agendas.
Why can’t we do things the old school way– let people have their own countries and beleifs. And then if we disagree– wipe them out?
An amputation approach to problems seems better than letting wounds fester for decades. And the problem will only get worse as medical science makes people live longer– because, frankly, a lot of people just come up with opinions without really opening themselves up to the possibility of seeing things differently. Yes, times are changing– but that’s because of the dilution of old values by the births of new generations, not because the old one has changed their mind about things.
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I’ve been thinking about why people don’t care about certain things. I’ve never really said that I’m a saint– but I think I do what I can in the major areas of my life to make sure that I’m doing what I believe in. I also think I try, with over average effort, to look into an overall system impact of the decisions I make and balance it all out so that most of my decisions have a neutral or positive impact on the world, or, at least, a projected neutral or positive impact overall over time.
I think the steam against corporatism is slowly running out. Yeah, we made a good run for it, but now people don’t care– it’s become a cliche. I was talking to my peers at school the other day, and six out of seven of them had pretty much decided that they were basically going to take their law degrees wherever the big bucks were, without really thinking too much about the content of it beyond interestingness.
I brought up the idea that working for large corporate firms who take on large corporate clients who stick it to the common man seems kinda… well, evil. But the idea was met with dismissive laughter.
I didn’t press the issue too much. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe it’s because I was outnumbered.
I am not someone who thinks that we will all be able to work in civil rights, or the ombudsman’s office, or whatever “progressive” sorts of law there are out there that make a positive impact on humanity. The statistics are against us.
However, I guess I was just shocked that even before the we graduate, the idea of doing law that promotes such humanitarian causes is already out the window. I guess, you can say, I’m disappointed.
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I’ve never really understood how we, as humans, have such a keen ability to compartmentalise and isolate things. We see this, we classify it, we put it in this box on the left. We see that, we classify it, we put it in the box on the right. And we have infinite boxes. But somehow, the idea that all these boxes are in the same room and that everything on the whole is flamable…. somehow, this seldom crosses peoples’ minds.
I guess I wish I knew more people who not only had a glimpse of the “bigger picture” but who were willing to base their lives on an acknowledgement of it– this, as opposed to seeing the bigger picture as an alternate reality or philosophy that sounds good in theory, but sure, here is my life, here are my conveniences, here are the things I want.
It’s a first world problem. It’s a first world problem that we’re driven to this idea that we’re still fighting for survival– we’re not. No matter how bad we have it in the first world, us lower middle class and higher really don’t have it that bad at all– we don’t need to be constantly pushing eachothers’ heads under water. We need to start thinking that at a certain point, this world’s population is going to make things seem a hella lot tighter, and at that point, we’re going to think– oh man– if only we’d started working on cooperation and sustainability at lot earlier, maybe we’d have gotten enough practice to prevent this multinational corporation from being put on the throne of the world.
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It’s not that I think that Law is a noble profession or anything. I just think that people, in general, should aspire to be nobler people.
There’s really no such thing as a noble profession. You could be a doctor– but you help good people and bad people alike. You could be a priest, you could volunteer, you could be a consellor or a psychiatrist– all the results of your work, in reality, could be a plus or minus on the world.
However, you do have control over what you think. Attitudes. Outlook.
So whil some people assume the nobleness or evil of a particular profession, I think on the whole it’s a misguided analysis– what we need are values, at the hearts of individuals.
It comes down to a question then: why don’t we care enough? Enough to do things we believe in? Enough to not do things we don’t believe in?
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I guess what I’m getting at is that, in my view, if you were a totally evil corporate lawyer, that’d be okay– as long as you believed in your ways. I mean, truly. Because who knows, maybe it’s what the world needs– maybe I’m on the side destined to lose. The only way we’ll know, however, is if you’re willing to fight tooth and nail with me, heart and soul. In the end? Even if you don’t believe, your company may win– but in life, you lose. You lose so badly.
When people say they’re going to do something because “that’s just the way it is,” it makes me want to just jump on a table and yell at them: “No, that’s the way you are!”
You don’t build Rome in a day, but you sure as hell need to start somewhere. Now’s as good a time as any.
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Back to compartmentalisation:
People are good to their friends.
People would not intentionally hurt their friends.
People would not intentionally hurt random people either.
It might be a stretch, but people generally would not uninentionally hurt random people if they could avoid it.
But… once you get paid, suddenly it’s okay to do things that intentionally and unintentionally hurt people in unwarranted and downright unfair ways. The business transaction, the degrees of disconnection between the product of our work and the people affected by it– somehow, that’s like a progressive disconnection that we rely on to mitigate our primal sense of responsibility not to hurt eachother.
Next thing you know, you’re buying coffee, just because you can, and it’s cheap. And somewhere in the world, someone dies under the sweltering sun, with dirt in his nails.
Next thing you know, you’re complaining about parking, just because you paid for your car and your gas. Meanwhile, automotive accidents account for increasing amoounts of injury and death in metropolitain societies.
Next thing you know, 1 third of the time you spend watching television is advertisments. But you get to watch the show for “free,” right?
Complacency is just… so disgusting. We’re trading our way to bigger and better things in the wrong direction.
I’m not saying we need to get it all right. What I am saying is that we ought all try. In all our small ways, just do a bit more every day.